Netanyahu will lobby American Jews on deal, calling on alleged loyalty to Jewish state

The big news over the weekend re the Iran deal is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be making a special appeal to American Jews on Tuesday to kill the deal. His webcast is sponsored by rightwing groups, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations. He is sure to say that there is one Jewish state in the world, that it is our — American Jews’ — homeland, and that it faces an existential threat in the form of the Iran deal.

It’s a straight-up play to American Jewish loyalty to the state of Israel: the issue Chuck Schumer said was so uncomfortable for him, back when he indicated he’d be supporting the deal because it was in the American interest if not a “Jewish interest.”

So Netanyahu will just drive the wedge even more explicitly, between the American Jews who are supporting the deal (the large majority who don’t really care all that much about Israel and do support the U.S. president) and the ardent opponents of the deal who really do take their cue from Jerusalem. The PM will further expose the workings of the Israel lobby inasmuch as it is pro-Israel groups (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Republican Jewish Coalition) that are trying to nullify President Obama’s achievement by spending as much as $40 million in lobbying. Millions that the President has complained about.

The inside-Jewish game on the issue continues to be where most of the action is, and the focus is on Jewish members of Congress. It’s like they have a supervote. If Jews go for the deal, then other Democrats can. As the State Department tweeted this morning, Adam Schiff of California told Jeffrey Goldberg he’s for it:

“At the end of the day, I could not find an alternative that would turn out in a better way than the deal,” he said. “Rejection of the deal would not lead to something credible. And I think that there are enough ways to mitigate the risks associated with the deal that it makes sense to me to move forward.” He went on, “The risks associated with rejection of the deal are quite a bit higher than the risks associated with going forward.”

The pro-Iran-deal lobbying forces are also cheering Barney Frank’s support for the deal in an op-ed in his adopted state, Maine. Frank makes a very realistic argument for the deal as the very best that can be achieved, and says that Netanyahu won’t support any deal at all because he wants regime change. That is not “remotely possible in the foreseeable future.”

Politico says that Chuck Schumer is now leaning against the deal, and that an “avalanche” of public pressure against the deal has reverberated through Congress. I bet that pressure is orchestrated. As Politico suggests, this issue is all about Israel, and donors.

Schumer [is] stuck between pro-Israel forces who have long been a key base of support and who are trying to kill the deal — and the White House and its progressive allies …

[I]f he supports it, he’s bound to get slammed by powerful Jewish donors and constituents who have long been among his staunchest supporters.

The Schumer wiggle supports the “kabuki” theory I reported last week, that the Senate will get to oppose the deal and the real action will take place in the House. The Jerusalem Post says that Obama appears to have the votes in Congress, but pressure is “particularly strong” on Jewish Dems.

Remember that Keith Ellison of Minnesota said that Democrats in the House are uncomfortable with the deal because Netanyahu is against it, and the rightwing foreign leader has a lot of “influence” in the House. Happily not on Ellison.

But Netanyahu is pressing on the Jewish Dems by pushing on a very fluid American public opinion. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows 2-1 Americans oppose the deal, after other polls have shown the reverse. “Only a bare majority of Democrats support the pact,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

This after we heard Dems were for it 75-17. What is going on here? It’s the lobbying, the onslaught of ads against the deal; and most people don’t care that much.

Most Jews care, and there’s a battle for their votes. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the voice of establishment Jewish groups on “key issues of importance to the Jewish community,” put out a memorandum to Jewish groups on how they should form their positions, and it includes this caution in its closing “Recommendations.” Emphasis mine.

Israel’s fears are legitimate and must be respected. We must make this apparent to elected officials, the media, and our community, no matter what our views of the agreement are.

I.e., it doesn’t matter if you support the deal, you have to give voice to Israel’s fears. Some might say that Israel’s stated fears are manipulative, disingenuous, or delusional. But this is the definition of the Israel lobby. American Jews must set aside their own views and stand for Israel when it counts.

The good thing about all this is that the Israel lobby is naked, and people get to talk about it. President Obama has helped. Last week he called out the billionaires and lobbyists as the same crowd who gave us the Iraq war, in his phone call to supporters. Neoconservative sites jumped on Obama’s appeal anti-Semitic. And even Nathan Guttman in the Forward objected to the appeal, saying it was suggesting that parts of the Jewish community pushed the Iraq war.

When put together it sounded something like this: Criticism of the deal, he said, comes “partly from the $20 million that’s being spent lobbying against the bill,” and “partly from the same columnists and former administration officials that were responsible for us getting into the Iraq war.“

The wording, though chosen carefully as not to conflate the two groups, treaded into a highly sensitive area for some in the Jewish community…

Tying AIPAC and those who pushed for military intervention in Iraq in the same argument, could be read as accepting the notion that the American Jewish community was behind the Iraq war. It is a notion the organized pro-Israel community has been trying to fight off for over a decade.

The problem is that a well-organized segment of the Jewish community did push the Iraq war: the neoconservatives (whom Alan Dershowitz, Benjamin Ginsberg and Jacob Heilbrunn all state come out of the Jewish community) and many of their “liberal” friends. This was the phalanx that produced A Clean Break for Benjamin Netanyahu and the Project for a New American Century letters for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; and much of Bush’s braintrust came from the neocon “cabal” (a word used by Heilbrunn, Linc Chafee and Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post). And their message was very straightforward: Israel’s war is our war, we must take out Saddam Hussein. As Joe Klein explained, the neocons told him behind the scenes that bringing down Iraq would set off a domino effect throughout the Middle East that would make Israel safer in the end. Tragic.

Leading Jewish groups fell for this appeal because they regarded neocons as slightly feverish, but attuned to Israel’s needs. AIPAC quietly pushed the Iraq war, and, sadly, the leading Reform Jewish organization supported military action against Iraq. Several Jewish legislators who had opposed the Vietnam War supported the Iraq war, notably Joe Lieberman and Schumer.

The good thing about the Iran war that the neoconservatives and Netanyahu want is that so many Jews are showing up in favor of the deal. We’re having a vigorous conversation about the influence of the rightwing Israel lobby, and the implicit call for dual loyalty that Zionism depends upon. So Netanyahu’s outreach will cause more American Jews to question whether they really wish to be the buttress of the Jewish state, which despite all the idealism has turned out to be a rightwing militaristic country that massacres children, occupies other people’s lands on a religious/ethnic basis, and forces Palestinians out of their homes. (“Israel wrecked my home. Now it wants my land” — in the Washington Post no less.)

Update: This piece said that Schumer and Lieberman made their names opposing the Vietnam war. Schumer opposed it but came to politics later. Lieberman first supported it, then switched in ’67.